The Optics of Education: An Interview with Elijah Armstrong

Betsy DeVos and Paul Ryan were both greeted with protests last week when they visited educational institutions; DeVos at historically black Bethune-Cookman University, and Paul Ryan at Harlem Success Academy, a charter school in New York. Education organizer Elijah Armstrong, of the National Education Association, explains what the two have to do with one another, and why education policy should be at the top of our list of things to worry about under Donald Trump.

Outtakes

"Most of the folks who need health care also go to schools that are 95 percent or 100 percent Title I schools, in highly impoverished areas . . . . Those kids, their parents, their families are the ones suffering the most from also this health care piece. . . . If these kids don’t have the resources, you are literally stripping them of the resources that they need and then calling them failures and saying it is their fault."

Interviews for Resistance is a project of Sarah Jaffe, with assistance from Laura Feuillebois and support from the Nation Institute.